This year’s newsletters are available for free but every paid subscription helps resist institutional fascism by fostering healthy relations between artist and reader. Participate in the community of creation by becoming a patron of the arts you consume, engaging with the content, and sharing what speaks to you. This may be an online space, but it can also be a launchpad for our shared visions to grow into something more.
In Case You Missed It, check out my debut appearance on the Our Big Fat Journey Across the Universe Podcast. I recently joined my friends and fellow cosmic explorers Kelsey and Jaimie to talk about the origins, practice, and meaning of astrology. I’ll be making recurring appearances throughout the season, but this was my first. It was such a pleasure chatting with Kelsey and Jaimie. You can find it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Please check it out and help grow the casual community of astrologers talking to non-astrologers about astrology.
If you want to talk about how any of these themes and challenges appear in your own life through the lens of astrology, I hope you'll consider booking a reading with me at Hearthfire Astrology. This Summer, 25% of all proceeds will be donated to local LA-based organizations providing much-needed food aid during the ongoing ICE raids on our neighbors.
Welcome to the First Quarter Moon in Scorpio! Today is Lammas, the Celtic festival marking the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. Today also happens to be my 42nd birthday. I've chosen to spend this month with family in Baltimore. I haven't spent this much time at home in the almost 9 years since I left for Los Angeles on my 33rd birthday. I love my family. I like my family. But I needed to find the Sun at my own center; to learn to distinguish the rhythm of my own heartbeat. I couldn't do it while in the many-tentacled depths of numerous complicated relationships. More simply, I got scared.
Leo season comes at the height of Summer. All life on Earth may come from the Sun's everlasting energy, but at this time of year everlasting feels relentless. With life and light comes the scorching heat. No one minds the days shortening when night brings the temperature down to a tolerable level. Life's activity moves into darkness, seeking comfort and safety to breathe, eat, and labor. Darkness is a treat when there is an abundance of light -- and we know it will be back in just a few hours.
Scorpio season comes as the darkness has become unmistakably dominant. It's already cold and will grow ever more so for months. In the time before artificial light and industrial farming, Scorpio season could be a really scary time. Depending on how the Summer growing and Fall harvest seasons had gone, the whole family could be in for a long, hungry battle. Some might not make it to Spring alive.
Leo is a fire sign ruled by the Sun. The Sun, being the originator of all life, needs do nothing but sit at the center of the solar system and burn. From the perspective of the Sun, life on Earth is constant since energy never dies, it only changes form.
Scorpio is a water sign ruled by the feminine Mars. The feminine Mars is primarily concerned with preserving her loved ones, who will all die. She doesn't care they will merely change form since the form she loves is singular and mortal. She'll fight for them as hard as she can, knowing she can only ever lose in the end. This Mars lives with the fear, rage, and grief of one who loves and loses deeply.
It takes real strength to live that way. Someone who cannot access their center or who cannot distinguish their heartbeat from those of others cannot maintain it. Real strength comes from vulnerability. It survives grief, having changed form but alive. Someone obsessed with preventing the inevitable will keep going deeper and deeper into their own emotional reserves, until they're little more than an exoskeleton, liquified and drained as if by a venomous monster.
I've been re-reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. It's a gorgeously wrought queer retelling of the story of Achilles, told from the perspective of his partner, Patroclus. Achilles, a mortal demi-God, is the subject of a prophecy. He can either live long in obscurity or die young in glory. His mother, Thetis, an immortal Goddess of the sea, is forever conspiring to control and deny the circumstances of his death, the same circumstances that will bring his immortality in myth. Thetis, eternal and powerful though she is, lacks real strength. She's obsessed with death, has a deeply destructive relationship with her son, and tries over and over again to deprive him of his loving partner, Patroclus.
Patroclus, however, an ordinary human whose life has centered his beloved Achilles since childhood, takes a different approach. Patroclus sticks by Achilles, following him to war in Troy. Knowing his beloved will die, Patroclus chooses to be a beacon of life. He rescues several women from rape and abduction, growing a community of learning and protection with them. He becomes a doctor, facing his own horror at the sight of blood, to be of service to the young men injured in a pointless war of attrition. Patroclus finds his own center -- his own integrity, courage, and loyalty, all Leo traits -- by choosing not to control what he fears, but to accept it. As Patroclus's strength grows, so does Achilles's. When Patroclus dies, Achilles loses his will to glory and dies in despair.
In this retelling, the steadfast and generous Patroclus is the hero, the possessive and destructive Thetis is the monster, and the brave and glorious Achilles represents inevitability. When I chose to re-read this novel during my trip home I hadn't really made the connection between its themes and those arising from my complex family relationships. But in Patroclus I discover the Leonine qualities I seek to embody with those I love.
When I left, I was more like Thetis, fearful, possessive, and obsessed with death. Watching people I love sicken and die had been terrifying; the desire to maintain the illusion of control had become debilitating. I could sense myself becoming more and more willing to resort to manipulations and shows of power, always with the intention of keeping my beloveds alive and safe just a little longer. When it didn't work, I decided to leave rather face what I most feared.
Nine years has passed and I've missed a lot. While I was out west finding my center and building my strength, people continued to age and sicken. Few died, thankfully, but I lost a lot of time with those living -- time that would certainly have included pain and joy, both. When my niece was born it suddenly clicked. There is something eternal in family relationships. Some will die, others will be born, but the beating heart at the center of it all has remained constant. Even when they couldn't see me nor I them, these people loved me. They released me to find my own way, demonstrating Patroclus's steadfast generosity with no pretense of heroism.
However much time we have left, at a distance or closer together, I want to focus on that part. If we all lived forever, there would be no motivation to savor anything. It's not about looking backward or forward in time with regret and worry. The eternal Spirit enlivening everything is here, now, in every inside joke and every shared memory. Of course I want the people I love to be safe and happy but they won't be, not always. The only always that exists is in presence and surrender. Now, as the Sun sets and the air cools, I'm going to step away and take a walk in the dusk rain through the old neighborhood, grateful for whatever time I have in this place with these people.
